New Big East serves as backdrop to annual Syracuse-Georgetown lacrosse rivalry

View full sizeKevin Wolf / AP, 2009Syracuse's Jovan Miller (23) knocks the ball loose from Georgetown's Chris Taylor (20) during the second quarter of their lacrosse game March 7, 2009, in Washington. SU went on to defeat the Hoyas 8-5.Syracuse, NY -- The inaugural Big East men’s lacrosse season is upon us. If you are wondering what to make of it, you have company.

"We’re still trying to figure out what that is," Syracuse coach John Desko said the other day as his team prepared to face Georgetown at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Carrier Dome in an annual rivalry that from now on will have "Big East" preceding it. "I’m talking to the kids about it, that it may bring a little more from the Georgetown end as far as talking about the conference."

Not so, says Hoyas coach Dave Urick.

"We’ve been playing Syracuse all along," the Buffalo native and former head coach at Hobart said. "I don’t know if makes a huge difference to our players. Syracuse itself is plenty for them."

Don’t get Desko and Urick wrong. They believe the decision to form a seven-team Big East men’s lacrosse conference featuring Georgetown, Notre Dame, Providence, Rutgers, St. John’s, Syracuse and Villanova is good for the sport and good for their teams.

"I think as far as a real conference, right now it has some of the highest ranked teams in the country," Desko said. "It has media legitimacy. We’ve seen Big East basketball and how it’s grown and what it’s done, and we certainly want to be part of it if it’s going to help lacrosse in general and help the conference grow."

"I think it’s good for the sport to have a conference with national reputation and name recognition," Urick said.

What about the Atlantic Coast Conference?

"Technically, the ACC doesn’t have a league," Urick said. "It has four teams that play the sport."

True. The NCAA mandates that a lacrosse conference must have a minimum of six members to qualify for league perks such as automatic qualifiers to the NCAA Tournament, and the ACC has only four – Duke, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.

So, on paper anyway, the Big East became the big cheese of men’s lacrosse the second its formation was announced.

Yet, the absence of a postseason tournament and the automatic qualifier – the NCAA mandates a two-year waiting period before the latter is awarded – have given the inaugural go-around the feel of an exhibition season.

"Not at all," junior midfielder Jovan Miller said when asked if he had considered that Saturday would be SU’s first conference game. "Sometimes I forget we’re even in a conference. It doesn’t really mean that much. I’m not sure how to feel about it."

Miller’s ambivalence is countered by the philosophical approach of teammate Joel White.

"I think it does many things," he said. "The automatic qualifier is great just in case you have a slip-up like we did a couple years ago. But at the same time I just think it’s great for the sport, actually having the Big East Conference, one of the biggest conferences around, to have that to build on."

The players’ views reflect those of SU’s large and vocal fan base. Some applauded the move, while others deluged fan internet message boards with dissent. SU and Johns Hopkins were the last of the sport’s independent giants, and the detractors believed the status quo was the way to go.

They accused Desko and the school of overreacting to the team’s 5-8 record, which preceded the June 2008 announcement of the formation of the conference. They bemoaned the replacing teams like Colgate, Loyola and Massachusetts on the schedule with Providence, St. John’s and Villanova. The Orange’s subsequent consecutive national titles and 34-5 record since then have done little to dissuade them of their opinion.

"I think you have a little bit of an elitist attitude, especially when it comes to Syracuse lacrosse and its success," Desko said. "You know, why would we have to change anything that we’re doing? But again, I think we’re looking at the conference and we’re looking at the growth of the sport, how the other teams can benefit from the conference, which will help Syracuse in the long run. The AQ in the future . . . there certainly could be a year where that really helps Syracuse."

Urick, whose team played in the ECAC before the formation of the Big East, can see both sides of the argument.

"I give John and Syracuse an awful lot of credit for agreeing to join the Big East Conference for lacrosse," he said. "They have had tremendous success for a long period of time as an independent. I can understand the concerns. Syracuse has never been one to dodge anybody. They’ll play anybody. That’s been their formula for success for a long time. For them to agree was significant."

Desko said that in hindsight the decision was easy. He has been able to keep traditional rivals such as Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell and Hobart on the slate while adding Notre Dame, which is a top-10 team this season.

"To improve our schedule by jumping into the Big East Conference really wasn’t expected," he said, "but I think some of the teams we lost are very low in the rankings right now and some of the teams we gained are high in the rankings."

Still, the debate continues. This much everybody agrees on: Without Syracuse and its multitude of national championships, there would be no Big East men’s lacrosse conference. Urick said there had been talk of a conference for years, but SU’s reluctance was a deal-breaker. He said Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan was at the forefront of the movement – ironic given the fact the Notre Dame’s football team continues to maintain its independent status in football while competing in the Big East in everything else.

Everything else now includes men’s lacrosse. Urick envisions a day when the same passion displayed at Madison Square Garden on Thursday when Georgetown and Syracuse met in the Big East men’s basketball tournament will leak over to men’s lacrosse.

In the meantime, Saturday may lack a conference feel even if it is SU-Georgetown.

"Georgetown’s a team we play either way," Miller said, "and it’s usually a pretty good game."